Archive for the ‘Token Money’ Category

As of mid-July, the U.S. media and bourgeois politics appear to be swept by a wave of political madness, both on the side of supporters of President Trump and his “liberal-establishment” opponents. Trump calls the “mainstream” organs of the U.S. media such as The New York Times and Washington Post enemies of the people. This heated rhetoric is more reminiscent of the “reigns of terror” associated with certain stages of the French and Russian revolutions than the more normal polite discourse of U.S. Democratic and Republican Party politicians.

The “establishment media” counter Trump’s charge by claiming that Trump is working for “team Russia” rather than “team USA.” The Democrats are now engaged in a debate whether they should charge the president with “treason” because he failed to denounce President Putin at the mid-July summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland, for “Russian intervention” in the 2016 election.

The problem for the Democrats is that if Trump is actually guilty of treason, they – being the great patriots they are – should move to impeach him in the House of Representatives. Treason, after all, is an impeachable offense. However, up to now the Democratic leadership, both in the House and the Senate, opposes impeachment.

Behind the heated rhetoric – false and demagogic on both sides – is a growing conflict. That is the conflict between the need for the further development of a society where production is carried out by the socialized labor of the workers of the entire world, on one side, and the continued rule of capital over production and the nation state, on the other.

Trump and his supporters in the ruling class believe that U.S. imperialism can no longer afford the costs of the U.S. empire in its current form. They demand a major re-division of the markets of the world in favor of U.S. capitalists at the expense of capitalists of U.S. “allies” in Europe and Asia, as well as the People’s Republic of China. If this is not achieved in the near future, the Trumpists believe, the U.S. world empire will crumble.

Under current arrangements, the U.S. guarantees the European imperialists – above all, Germany – access to world markets and raw materials. Meanwhile, the Trumpists complain, Germany and other European imperialist powers are “freeloading” on the costs of the “defense” of the U.S. empire, which as a result fall disproportionately on the U.S.

Trump therefore wants to restructure the empire so that the European and Japanese satellites of the U.S. get a smaller share of the global market while paying more for the empire’s defense against the exploited and oppressed peoples of the world. And he wants this achieved now! Not surprisingly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel prefers the status quo, which indeed has turned out quite nicely for the German capitalists that Merkel serves.

The Chinese leaders, in order achieve their goal of a moderately developed China by mid-century, need a much larger share of the world market than China has at present. To put things in perspective, Germany with a population of a little more than 80 million, has about the same share of world trade as China with a population of over 1 billion. If Trump achieves his goal, China will be locked into a situation of permanent underdevelopment.

By the time of the U.S. presidential election in November 2020, historical experience and the condition of global money markets suggest that the current global economic boom will probably have run its course. While the latest government economic figures show the current boom continuing in the United States and Europe, serious crises have already hit the currencies of Argentina and Turkey.

The dollar after a period of weakness has begun rising against the euro and other currencies and against gold. This sudden dollar strength is not only the result of rising U.S. interest rates. Trump’s threat to impose high tariffs on a whole range of commodities starting on July 6 has set off a flight into the dollar due to its role as the international means of payment. We have seen many such flights into the dollar over the years whenever a crisis threatens, whether political, military or economic.

If no compromise is reached by July 6 and Trump’s tariffs – and the retaliatory tariffs of competing nations – go into effect, it is possible that some commodity sales will fall through, which could trigger an international credit crisis. If severe enough, such a crisis would quickly throw the global capitalist economy into recession. This is all the more likely given the very late stage in the current industrial cycle, which has made the global credit system increasingly fragile even in the absence of a trade war. Whatever happens in the short run, Trump’s economic nationalist “America First” policies are undermining the entire world order that has prevailed since 1945. But that is the subject for another post.

Because capitalist economic crises tend to manifest themselves first in the spheres of currency and then credit, many reformers have sought cures for crises through reforms to the currency and credit systems. This creates the illusion in the minds of middle-class reformers, who stand between the two main class camps of modern society, the capitalist class and the working class, that the contradictions of capitalist society can be overcome through reforming the credit/monetary system. The U.S., in particular, has produced numerous monetary reform movements.

U.S capitalism has been in decline for decades. Within that long-term trend, U.S. capitalism continues to experience cyclical booms. During its dramatic rise between 1865 and 1929, the U.S. economy experienced three major financial panics—1873, 1893 and 1907—along with numerous lesser recessions. However, the increase of the number of workers employed in manufacturing—which represents the core of capitalist production and the core of the working class—that occurred during the industrial booms of that era was greater than the declines that occurred during recessions. In the years 1945-1979, though the number of workers in manufacturing began to decline relative to overall employment—a symptom of capitalist decay—that number continued to grow in absolute terms.

However, since the recession 1979-82, known as “the Volcker shock,” the pattern has reversed. The U.S. economy has continued to experience cyclical booms—defined as periods of above-average business activity in terms of industrial production, manufacturing, and overall employment and trade—as well as recessions. But the rise in manufacturing employment during booms—if any—has been far less than the declines during recessions. Therefore, the year 1979, which marks the beginning of the Volcker shock recession, represents the most important turning point—not excepting 1929—in the history of U.S. capitalism.

History of interest rates

A chart showing the history of interest rates over the last few centuries shows an interesting pattern — low hills and valleys with a generally downward tendency. During and immediately after World War I, interest rates form what looks like a low mountain range. Then with the arrival of the Great Depression of the 1930s, rates sink into a deep valley. Unlike during World War I, interest rates remain near Depression lows during World War II but start to rise slowly with some wiggles through the end of the 1960s.

But during the 1970s, interest rates suddenly spike upward, without precedent in the history of capitalist production. It is as though after riding through gently rolling country for several hundred years of capitalist history, you suddenly run into the Himalaya mountain range. Then, beginning in the early 1980s, interest rates start to fall into a deep valley, reaching all-time lows in the wake of the 2007-09 Great Recession. Clearly something dramatic occurred in the last half of the 20th century.

Last month, we saw that Shaikh’s view of “modern money” as “pure fiat money” is essentially the same as the “MELT” theory of money. MELT stands for the monetary expression of labor time.

The MELT theory of value, money and price recognizes that embodied labor is the essence of value. To that extent, MELT is in agreement with both Ricardian and Marxist theories of value. However, advocates of MELT do not understand that value must have a value form where the value of a commodity is measured by the use value of another commodity.

Supporters of MELT claim that since the end of the gold standard capitalism has operated without a money commodity. Accordingly, prices of individual commodities can be above or below their values relative to the mass of commodities as a whole. However, by definition the prices of commodities taken as a whole can never be above or below their value.

Instead of the autocracy of gold, MELT value theory sees a democratic republic of commodities where, as far as the functions of money are concerned, one commodity is just as good as another. Under MELT’s democracy of commodities, all commodities are money and therefore no individual commodity is money.

“The real net rate of profit,” Shaikh writes, “is the central driver of accumulation, the material foundation around which the ‘animal spirits’ of capitalists frisk, with injections of net new purchasing power taking on a major role in the era of fiat money.” This sentence sums both the strengths and the basic flaw in Shaikh’s theory of crises, and without too much exaggeration the whole of his “Capitalism.”

By “net rate of profit,” Shaikh means the difference between the total profit (surplus value minus rent) and the rate of interest, divided by total advanced capital. This is absolutely correct.

But now we come to the devastating weakness of Shaikh’s analysis. Shaikh refers not to the net rate of profit but the real net rate of profit. “Real” refers to the use value of commodities as opposed to their value—embodied abstract human labor—and the form this value must take—money value. While real wages—wages in terms of use values—are what interest workers, the capitalists are interested in profit, which must always consist of and be expressed in the form of exchange value—monetary value (a sum of money).

In modern capitalism, as a practical matter the money that makes up net profit or profit as a whole consists of bank credit money convertible into state-issued legal-tender paper money that represents gold bullion. The fact that legal-tender paper money must represent gold bullion in circulation is an economic law, not a legal law. (More on this in next month’s post.) When Shaikh refers to real net profit, he does not refer to profit at all but rather to the portion of the surplus product that is purchased with the money that makes up the net profit.

Shaikh deals with money in two chapters—one near the beginning of “Capitalism” and one near the end. The first is Chapter 5, “Exchange, Money, and Price.” The other is Chapter 15, “Modern Money and Inflation.” In this post, I will concentrate on Shaikh’s presentation in Chapter 5. In Chapter 15, Shaikh deals with what he terms “modern money.” I will deal with his presentation in this chapter when I deal with Shaikh’s theory of inflation crises that is developed in the last part of “Capitalism.”

In Chapter 5, Shaikh lists three functions of money—considerably fewer than Marx does. The three functions, according to Shaikh, are (1) money as a medium of pricing (p. 183), (2) money as a medium of circulation, and (3) money as a medium of safety. Shaikh deals with money’s function as a means of payment under its role as a means of circulation. The problem with doing this is that money’s role as a means of payment is by no means identical to its role as a means of circulation and should have been dealt with separately.

Anybody who has studied seriously the first three chapters of “Capital” Volume I will be struck by how radically improvised Shaikh’s presentation here is compared to that of Marx. It is in the first three chapters of “Capital” that Marx develops his theory of value, exchange value as the necessary form of value, and money as the highest form of exchange value. He does this before he deals with capital. Indeed, Marx had to, since the commodity and its independent value form, money, is absolutely vital to Marx’s whole analysis of capital.

“The interest rate is the price of finance,” Shaikh writes at the beginning of Chapter 10, “Competition, Finance, and Interest Rates.” Shaikh treats the rate of interest as fluctuating around the price of production of the “provision of finance.” Late in Chapter 10, Shaikh indicates he was confused on this subject in the 1970s and the early 1980s but brought to his current views by the Sraffrian-neo-Ricardian Italian economist Carlo Panico. Is this the correct approach to ascertaining what actually determines the rate(s) of interest? I believe it is not.

Do interest rates really fluctuate around a “price” of the provision of finance the way market prices fluctuate around prices of production? Strictly speaking, price is the value of one commodity measured in terms of the use value of the commodity that serves as the universal equivalent—money. According to this definition, interest rates are not prices at all.

It is true that we often use price in a looser sense. For example, we talk about the prices of securities that are in reality legal documents that entitle their owners to flows of income. Another example is the price of unimproved land whose owners hold titles to flows of ground rent. It would be absurd to talk about the price of production of unimproved land if only because unimproved land is a form of wealth produced by nature and not by human labor.

Some other ‘non-price’ prices

Another example of a price that is not a real price is the dollar “price” of gold. This very important economic variable is not really a price at all but instead measures the amount of gold that a dollar represents at any moment. Other examples of “non-price” prices are the “price” of one currency in terms of another—exchange rates—and the price of politicians.

In the “super-Tuesday” primaries held March 15, Donald Trump solidified his lead in the struggle for the Republican nomination for the U.S. presidency. He knocked right-wing Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida out of the race.

Rubio had been considered one the best hopes of the pro-Wall Street establishment Republicans in their increasingly desperate struggle to stop Trump. The only bright spot for the Republican leadership was that John Kasich, the establishment Republican governor of rust-belt state Ohio defeated Trump in that state’s primary.

However, Kasich has few delegates pledged to him. In normal circumstances, that would mean that he would have virtually no chance of winning the nomination for the presidency. He would simply be a “favorite son” candidate who would be expected to release his delegates to vote for the eventual winner. At most, Kasich might hope to win the vice-presidential nomination.

The super-Tuesday results barely keep alive the hopes of the Republican leadership that Trump might still be denied enough delegates to clinch the nomination before the Republican convention to be held this coming July in Cleveland, Ohio. If this proves to be the case, there remains the possibility a majority of delegates might be scraped together to nominate a more traditional Republican for president, but who that might be is anybody’s guess at this point.

The only other Republican besides Trump and Kasich still officially in the race is Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz mixes extreme “neo-liberal” economics with an appeal to the religious fanaticism of the so-called Christian Right. His colleagues in Republican Party leading circles consider him personally obnoxious. They also fear that he is likely to lose big time in November to the presumed Democratic nominee, Wall Street darling Hillary Clinton, due to his neo-liberalism combined with his support of extreme sectarian Protestant Christian religious fundamentalism.

While it is possible that Trump has considerable support among the coupon clippers in the country club locker rooms—I don’t know, since I don’t personally move in these circles—serious political strategists of the U.S. ruling class, whether Democrat or Republican—what Marx called the “political bourgeoisie“—consider Trump completely unqualified to assume the U.S. presidency. This is not because they doubt Trump’s loyalty to the capitalist system. On the contrary, Trump is a multi-billionaire and therefore has a personal stake in the survival of capitalism greater than all but a handful of his fellow billionaires.

In a previous post, I indicated that there cannot be an overproduction of gold in its role as money material. This has been more or less the received view among Marxist writers over the years.

However, in thinking about this question more carefully I think my earlier post was incorrect on this point. I was correct in stating that from the viewpoint of capitalists as a whole there cannot be “too much” gold as far as the realization of value of (non-gold) commodities is concerned. The more gold there is relative to the quantity of other commodities, everything else remaining equal, the easier it will be for industrial and commercial capitalists to sell their commodities at their prices of production and thus realize the surplus value contained in them in the form of profit.

But what is true for the non-gold producing capitalists is not true for the gold producing capitalists. Indeed, from the viewpoint of an individual industrial capitalist there can never be too much of the commodities produced by their suppliers. As a productive consumer, industrial capitalist A can hope for nothing better than that supplier industrial capitalist B overproduces as much as possible. When B overproduces, all other things remaining equal, A gets to pocket some of the surplus value contained in B’s commodities. But from B’s point of view, the overproduction of B’s commodity is an absolute disaster.

True, the (non)gold producing capitalists do not consume gold, insomuch as gold serves as money material as opposed to raw material. But it is absolutely essential for them that gold is produced in adequate quantities if the value, including the surplus value, contained in their commodities is to be realized.

Even if gold bullion played no role whatsoever as raw material, a certain level of gold production would still be necessary for capitalist expanded reproduction to proceed. And capitalism can only exist as expanded reproduction.

How much gold capitalism needs—with the development of the credit system, banking, clearing houses, and so on being given—depends on the level and vigor of expanded reproduction at a particular time. The greater the possibilities of exploiting wage labor and the higher the rate of surplus value and the potential rate of profit in value terms, the higher the level of gold production must be if the process of expanded capitalist production is to proceed unchecked.